Two mission-related book groups seek summer readers for fall programs

Catholic higher education and environmental stewardship and sustainability are the subjects of two reading groups that are recruiting members from St. Thomas faculty, staff and students.

The Office for Mission is sponsoring the groups, which will read a text over the summer and meet during the fall semester. Both subjects – Catholic identity and stewardship – are included in the university’s mission and strategic priorities.

Professors Steve Laumakis, Philosophy, and Paul Wojda, Theology, will moderate the Catholic higher education group. They have chosen the text God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Traditionby Alasdair MacIntyre. He is a senior research professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. The book is designed to show how belief in God informed and informs philosophical enquiry in different historical and social settings.

Professors Elise Amel, Psychology, and Steven Hoffman, Political Science, will moderate the environmental stewardship and sustainability group. The text they have chosen is Aldo Leopold’s classic A Sand County Almanac. Leopold, who died in 1948, was a professor of wildlife management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His book describes a land ethic, which is an ecological approach to the relationship between humans and their environment.

The books will be distributed to group members near the end of spring semester. The reading groups will meet three times in the fall.